Native Wildflowers of the North Dakota Grasslands

Stemless Hymenoxys (Hymenoxys acaulis)

Restricted in distribution to the western one-third of North Dakota, stemless
hymenoxys occurs throughout most of the western United States and southern
Saskatchewan. The plant has also rarely been found in several locations east
of the Mississippi River. In western mountain ranges plants have been collected
at elevations up to 12,000 feet.

The plant has no stem. Instead, the structure supporting the flower head
is a leafless organ called a scape. North Dakota specimens of stemless hymenoxys
are up to 10 inches tall and perennial from a crown of tough old bases from
previous years' growth. This crown is at the top of a woody taproot. Leaves
are all basal, silvery green with short hairs, about 2 inches long and a quarter
inch wide. Flower heads are solitary and about 3/4 inch wide, with pale yellow
rays that bend downward at maturity. Fruits are fuzzy achenes about 1/8-inch
long.

Look for stemless hymenoxys in dry soils of the high prairie and among rocky
breaks in the badlands. Cattle seem to avoid the plant, and it seems slightly
more abundant where grazing is moderate or heavy. One southern Hymenoxys
is poisonous to livestock, especially sheep, but stemless hymenoxys likely
is harmless.

Stemless hymenoxys is a member of the sunflower family (Asteraceae) of which
there are about 15,000 species worldwide and about 200 species in North Dakota.
The generic name was compounded from the Greek humen "membrane" and
oxys "sour", likely in allusion to the translucent scales at the base
of the flowers and the sour or bitter taste of several of the species. Acaulis
means "without a stem" in botanical Latin. The plant was first described under
another genus by Frederick Pursh (1774-1815), and later placed into the genus
Hymenoxys by Kittie Lucille (Fenley) Parker (1910- ), a specialist
in the Asteraceae of the southwest United States.